Chapter Sixty
So this is it. The final chapter. I hope that you like it. :-)
Disclaimer: No, I don't own any of these characters or settings. I'd be a lot richer if I did.
"I can't," Jack said.
"You have to," the Doctor repeated. "I know what I'm doing. Trust me."
"Why should I?" Jack asked, lowering his gun. "Tell me, Doctor. What am I supposed to do?"
"Let me do what needs to be done. Sit with Ianto until he wakes up, do whatever you two do, and let me do what I have to."
"If you try anything..." Jack warned, holstering his webley, "I won't hesitate to shoot you."
The Doctor regarded Jack with sad eyes. "Does it always have to involve guns, Jack?"
"You didn't seem so averse to that stunner, yourself." Jack crouched down to check Ianto's pulse, relieved to find it sure and steady. He stroked Ianto's cheek, willing him to wake up. C'mon, Ianto, it's just a stunner... Wake up already...
"He'll wake up in a couple of hours," the Doctor said.
"If you've hurt him—"
"I haven't hurt him," the Doctor snapped impatiently. "Now, are you going to let me get on with this or keep wasting time?"
Jack took a deep breath, clearly steeling himself. "Okay. Do it."
The Doctor held out his hand, already rooting around in his pocket for his sonic screwdriver.
"What?" Jack asked, looking confused.
"Vortex Manipulator."
"I'm not—" Jack broke off, and with a resigned sigh took off the leather wristband and handed it over. "I hope you know what you're doing."
-T-
Light. Bright light. Burning. Burning his eyes, stabbing at his brain. Pain – such pain. The Doctor gasped, covering his eyes with his hands, to no avail.
"I've changed time," he breathed, in dreadful realisation. "I've done it."
And the fantastic light grabbed him and swept him away in a current of confusion and chaos. White fire licked at his body, destroying him from the inside-out. The pain—
And then two arms were holding him securely, and a familiar American-accented voice was saying, "It's okay, Doc – I've got you."
The Doctor closed his eyes, the tide of burning light fading away as the immortal carried him out of the ripping-apart of existence itself.
-T-
"What happens now?" Jack asks. If the Doctor didn't know him better, he would have thought that Jack was scared. But the great Captain Jack Harkness doesn't get scared. Not ever.
The Doctor shrugged, time still rippling all around him, golden streaks still entwined around his hands and arms, caressing his fingers, threatening to burn. "I guess I need to fix it so that you won't remember it. So that it'll never have existed." He smiled, though he knew that it was bitter. "After all, memories are the key to existence."
"That's not always the case," Jack argued, his eyes following the Doctor's hands, hypnotised by the shimmering coils. "You can't take our memories, Doctor. You can't. You..."
The Doctor frowned at him. "Jack, snap out of it."
Jack was still staring at the impossible threads of fire, his face starting to slacken.
"Jack!"
Jack blinked and shook his head. "Sorry," he said, looking embarrassed. "It's just so..."
"Time's still on the brink of falling apart, Jack," the Doctor said. "We can't leave it teetering on the brink like this."
Jack's brows drew together in a frown. "That reminds me – how exactly did you change time?"
The Doctor held up a hand, watching the strands of white-gold flame winding around his fore-arms like snakes. "I think that's better left secret," he said, knowing that he sounded enigmatic and mysterious, and getting a slight kick out of it.
Jack clearly didn't believe him, but refrained from pushing. "You still can't take our memories," he said. He nodded over at where he had laid Ianto on the couch, the Welshman still out cold. "I don't want to lose what I've got."
"You won't," the Doctor said, surprised. "I'm only taking away the past few— Oh. I see." The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, momentarily forgetting about the gold. He looked back at Jack to see the Captain staring at him in part fascination, part horror. "What?"
Jack nodded at him. "You're glowing, Doctor. Glowing."
"Am I?" The Doctor touched his hair. It seemed just the same as normal.
Then he felt it. That whisper in his mind. The sensual caress that remained entirely mental. "Oh," he whispered, entranced.
Do it.
"Do what?" the Doctor asked. Painpleasurepainpleasureburningstoppleasestop—
The Doctor gasped, his senses flooding with the entirety of the fire. Jack's voice, faint and distant: "Do ... tor? Wha ... s ... app ... nin'?"
"Oh," the Doctor said again, as all of time was displayed to him in its full glory, ripping his mind into infinite pieces and scattering them throughout his consciousness. "I understand now."
"You ... derstand ... at?"
"All of it." The Doctor closed his eyes, then opened them again, now able to see Jack's terrified face staring at him and begging him to explain, to make things alright again. "I have to fix it."
"How? Doctor?"
"Sorry, Jack." The Doctor held up a hand and golden light streamed from his palm to hit Jack square in the face and tumble him backwards onto the couch by Ianto; then they both were swept up in a tidal wave of fire and burning and light, being hurtled into something new and being created at that very second.
Time itself was being rewritten.
And the Doctor threw back his head, lifted his arms above his head and laughed, the wind and flames whirling the sound away and amplifying it so that he could hear it from every direction, from every time. Laughing throughout infinity.
Exhilarated, the Doctor laughed and laughed.
-T-
Time was back in its usual flux, the Doctor noted as he stealthily slipped down the ladder into Jack's room beneath his office. Only the memories to remove, then.
Jack's voice echoed in his head
The Doctor gazed sadly at the sleeping men in front of him. "I'm really, really sorry about this," he told them, even though he knew that they couldn't hear him. "I've done some pretty bad things in my time, but this has to rank up with the worst of them."
Jack had his head tucked in against Ianto's neck, his hand splayed possessively over the younger man's chest. Ianto's face looked relaxed and open in his sleep, his fingers wound through Jack's hair and his cheeks flushed pink. He looked so young, almost angelic; more importantly, he looked in love. How could the Doctor take that from him?
The Doctor tasted bitter regret in his mouth, the guilt weighing down his tongue. Before he could break his resolve, he retrieved the blue vial from his jacket pocket and held it up to the light falling in through the manhole. "Advanced version of your retcon," he said softly. "It'll rewrite your memories of the last couple of months." He smiled bitterly. "What wouldn't I give for it to work on me, too. I never wanted anyone to get hurt. I ... I don't know what I wanted. I wanted to help them, I guess. They're the last of their race, too." His smile twisted and faded. "Look what happened. Or rather, what didn't happen." He grimaced. "That's one hell of a paradox I've created. There's going to be consequences, I know. And I'm sorry, but I've given you longer – I've given you more. And I've taken more," he admitted in a low voice. "I'm sorry."
Ianto mumbled something in his sleep, his fingers tightening reflexively in Jack's hair. The Doctor hesitated, watching for any signs of either of them waking, then carefully, almost reverently, twisted open the vial and let the pale blue gas escape; it quickly faded into the air, and the Doctor stowed the sapphire glass in his pocket once more before making his escape up the ladder and closing the manhole behind him.
Before he headed up to the Tourist Information office, the Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver at the mainframe computer, quickly crashing the computer and corrupting the data on the mission logs. He had to wipe every last detail of the past two months from Torchwood; Gwen and her husband had already been wiped, as had Tosh, Owen, Martha and Donna. None of them could be allowed to remember. They couldn't be allowed to remember what didn't technically exist.
Once the door of the office closed behind him, the Doctor let out a long sigh, and walked to the rail; he leant over, staring down into the dark, watery depths beneath the walkway of Mermaid Quay. As he expected, a silver-brown mullet rose to the surface and fixed him with an inquisitive yellow eye.
"It's done," the Doctor said. He looked out across the water, to where the sun was beginning to rise; blood-coloured rays extended out across the water, bleeding into the surging blue-green and spilling everywhere, until the water was no longer distinguishable from the sky; both were a striking mixture of reds, oranges, blues and purples all blended together to form one great landscape with the burning sun as a centrepiece, a great ball of fire akin to those featured in numerous prophecies.
The fish didn't respond. When the Doctor looked down, he saw that the water was empty, devoid of anything but a shadow flickering beneath the surface, racing away across the ocean.
With a heavy heart, the Doctor turned and strode across the Plass to the TARDIS, not looking back even the once. He'd done what he had to do; his job was done. Now he – and Donna, when she awoke – had the rest of time and space to explore. Until the paradox began requesting its compensation on the universe, that was.
Until then, he had to run, and keep running. He wasn't Jack, he couldn't fight the inevitable in an attempt at happiness; he was the one who stole the happiness, who destroyed the lives. And for what?
That was an answer he was still searching for. But, in the meantime, he still had planets to save, in an attempt for the pain he knew he would bring.
For he was the Oncoming Storm. He may well have met his match in one Ianto Jones; so un-powerful it was almost comical, but with the love to turn an immortal man against his greatest friend despite the threat of a Storm.
But the Welsh were used to rain, right?
FINIS
I hope you all enjoyed the ride with this story – I certainly have done! – and that the ending wasn't too anti-climatic, and that it made sense!
I'm not entirely certain that it makes sense to me (it got distracted from the aliens, so I'm leaving it up to you to decide whether the aliens were good/bad, whether they are now gone/simply waiting to wreak mischief again) but I welcome constructive criticism if anybody has any ideas as to how else it could have all been fixed!
Thank you so much – there will be a list of all of you lovely reviewers up tomorrow – and please let me know what you think! :-D